Jul -- Computers and Technology: User interfaces that suck!

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Posted on 11-30-09 04:45:45 AM

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GUI knobs.

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Posted on 11-30-09 01:27:32 PM

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The Office 2007/Windows 7 ribbon. It might technically actually be "better" for someone who is new to using a computer, but how many people count as part of that? Why change an established UI standard and offer no way to switch back?

I do realize that for some people, it works. That's fine. But when I've been using Office for about 14 years, a radical change like this is counterintuitive. Why the old toolbar and menu-based approach was not also included as an alternative boggles my mind.

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Posted on 11-30-09 03:36:31 PM

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The human eye is attracted to bright light, vivid colors, motion, and human eyes. Black mouse cursors are none of these, and can easily be lost on any remotely-busy screen that isn't a solid color. The dimmer the display, the harder it is to locate the cursor even while waggling it around in circles. The only reason people notice it on any colorful background is because of the white outline.

The ribbon interface is rather annoying to people who are used to the established interface, but I have more respect for it now that I realize every single control on the whole ribbon is right at the tips of your fingers with just the touch of the alt key.

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Posted on 11-30-09 03:57:43 PM

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Originally posted by Peardian
The human eye is attracted to bright light, vivid colors, motion, and human eyes. Black mouse cursors are none of these, and can easily be lost on any remotely-busy screen that isn't a solid color. The dimmer the display, the harder it is to locate the cursor even while waggling it around in circles. The only reason people notice it on any colorful background is because of the white outline.

I actually have a cursor that is the inverse of the color of the background (web page, desktop, program, etc.) so I have an easier time finding it.

But yeah. Office ribbon must die.

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Posted on 12-03-09 01:04:00 PM (last edited by Terra at 12-03-09 10:04 AM)

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Dialogue boxes for which the default button is "No" or "Cancel". What, they assume that everyone using the dialogue box made a mistake?

The inability to turn off some "Are you sure?" boxes, especially if an action is undoable anyway.

Any option that says "Recommended". If you want to recommend an option, make it the default option. Poof. It's recommended.

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Posted on 12-03-09 01:07:45 PM

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Livestream's player not having a cancel button when you click the "change nickname" button.

I'm not a fan of Windows Vista/7 Basic schemes, either... it's Aero or Classic for me.

re office ribbon: I actually somewhat like this interface. There SHOULD be an option, but it's nowhere near as bad to me as people say it is.

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Posted on 12-03-09 03:19:01 PM

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I'm a fan of the ribbon as well, actually. Dialog boxes that pop up after A delay where you can start doing stuff, because then while you're busy the dialog pops up and starts chomping on your keypresses. I'm looking at you, Winrar! ____________________

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Posted on 12-04-09 02:37:00 AM

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Post #2686 - 12-03-09 09:37:00 PM

Make that any window that steals focus, ever. When it happens while you're typing and the keypress activates a button before the dialog has even actually appeared, that's just icing on the cake.

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paulguy

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Posted on 12-04-09 07:18:42 AM

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Windows's lack of force on top/behind/normal for windows.

Pidgin remembering passwords when you enter the wrong one, even if you didn't tell it to, but WON'T for any other server/connection error.

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Posted on 12-04-09 12:45:29 PM

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Originally posted by paulguy
Windows's lack of force on top/behind/normal for windows.

Pidgin remembering passwords when you enter the wrong one, even if you didn't tell it to, but WON'T for any other server/connection error.

That's not so much of a bad interface design as not having a feature. But then again, my old desktop actually did have that feature available because of the graphics card.

In the same line as Pidgin, the Mac FTP program Fugu has the feature to remember passwords (even wrong ones), but for whatever reason it will never remember the username you log in with. In fact, to make it worse, it sets your account name as the default username, which in many cases would be your first name. It doesn't even have an autocomplete list or anything.

In addition, closing the window like you would a normal program keeps it running with no windows open. The only bring up the window again is to find the command "Show SFTP Window" which is, in fact, not in the Window menu or the View menu but in the SFTP menu.

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Posted on 12-04-09 03:00:13 PM

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Any UI that uses a custom 'skin' and buttons. Ugly as sin.

I'm looking at you, bundled crapware, CD burner and DVD player software.

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Posted on 12-04-09 04:10:57 PM

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Originally posted by Terra
This Web site

This is a pretty fascinating read. 80% of the stuff on that site smacks of early-90s "innovative design" or whatever that looks pretty laughable today (even the site itself looks severely dated) but a lot of the stuff is nonetheless still extremely relevant today, like the thing about out-of-order tab indexing on controls, and the entire page dedicated to the crappy Quicktime GUI from who knows how many years ago.

Originally posted by "Lain"
Any UI that uses a custom 'skin' and buttons. Ugly as sin.

I definitely agree with this because for some reason everyone who designs these things feels the need to make them look like big goofy car stereos, whether it's an antivirus application (hi there Avast) or an overclocking utility (really, type 'overclocking utility' into GIS, you'll see what I mean) or anything else like that.

Of course, the classic example of the skinned UI that is supposed to resemble a stereo (that is, Winamp Classic) is the one that I actually like (though that's saying nothing about other people's Winamp skin disasterpieces, eugh)

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Posted on 12-04-09 04:56:54 PM (last edited by Bagel at 12-04-09 01:59 PM)

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Originally posted by Lain
Any UI that uses a custom 'skin' and buttons. Ugly as sin.

I'm looking at you, bundled crapware, CD burner and DVD player software.

Steam.

Is there any reason why Steam can't use standard controls?

Before Leopard, OS X had kind of an inconsistent UI. It had the Aqua windows with either a solid light gray or a pinstripe pattern, and then brushed metal-type appearances. With Leopard everything finally got a consistent appearance. Ever since Leopard was released I have not seen one application for OS X that uses a custom UI skin.

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paulguy

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Posted on 12-04-09 11:04:36 PM

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Originally posted by Peardian
In addition, closing the window like you would a normal program keeps it running with no windows open. The only bring up the window again is to find the command "Show SFTP Window" which is, in fact, not in the Window menu or the View menu but in the SFTP menu.

Isn't that how pretty much everything is on the Mac? A lot of programs I have on my macbook seem to do this very same thing. The only way to actually close them is to go to their application menu and go to Quit, or command+q.

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Posted on 12-04-09 11:40:57 PM

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Originally posted by paulguy
Isn't that how pretty much everything is on the Mac? A lot of programs I have on my macbook seem to do this very same thing. The only way to actually close them is to go to their application menu and go to Quit, or command+q.

It would be better if they all did that, but there isn't really a standard. Many quit themselves when the main window is closed, even ones that take a long time to load up in the first place. I would consider this a bad interface design to begin with, because it provides the user almost no indication whatsoever that the program is running. If you switch to a program that has no windows open, what happens? Nothing. Unless you're paying attention to the far edges of the screen, you'd think that the press failed. This flaw is carried further by programs that don't even give the user some kind of splash screen when the program is initiated. If you didn't know any better, you'd try to click the icon several more times to see if it's even open yet. Whether it's minimalistic or artistic or just different, it's still making things needlessly confusing for the user.

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Posted on 12-06-09 08:17:06 AM

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	Originally posted by Lain Any UI that uses a custom 'skin' and buttons. Ugly as sin. Hamachi just switched to a glossy custom interface, and it breaks Windows' right-click menus until I reboot. There's no way to go back to the old UI, either. Isn't that fantastic? Virtually all Taiwanese hardware manufacturers are infatuated with atrocious custom UIs, especially Realtek. If I have to see that horrible audio control panel one more time... ____________________

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Posted on 12-06-09 11:00:05 AM

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Post #2694 - 12-06-09 06:00:05 AM

As a bonus, a huge number of those programs hardcode their text colours but not their background colours. So try to use a dark theme and you get black text on a black background. Yay! In fact many programs do this even when they're not using a custom interface, including built-in components of Windows 9x - enough to make dark themes completely unusable.

I'd also like to express my annoyance at Mario Kart: Super Circuit not having the option to show a speedometer outside Time Trial mode. What the hell is that about.

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Posted on 12-06-09 01:56:35 PM

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Originally posted by HyperHacker
As a bonus, a huge number of those programs hardcode their text colours but not their background colours.

Ugh, I hate this.

I come from the pre-GUI era and still have a preference for dark backgrounds with light text (even though I do prefer GUIs to CLIs). If I set up a computer in such a way, there's often some program, usually something like a ROM hacking tool, that forces the background colour but uses the default foreground colour, or vice-versa.

Also I often right-click on things to try to find a context menu if I'm trying to do something like delete or rename. If there is no context menu, interfaces used to ignore the click. Now, they tend to treat it as a left-click, so I end up activating the thing I was trying to delete/rename/whatever

I have a feeling this was yet another of those features designed to make it easier for newbies while annoying experienced users.

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Posted on 12-06-09 09:45:26 PM

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Post #2697 - 12-06-09 04:45:26 PM

I've never seen that happen.

It reminds me though of how "Preferences" always moves around. Some apps put it in Edit, others in Tools, some have their own Options menu... make up your damn minds.

Even worse than the hardcoded colours are those that try to look pretty (Office-style menus, basically all of KDE, most .Net apps) and either ignore user settings entirely (gah what is this brightly coloured window in my dark-themed environment) or create a horrid mash of user settings and their own styles. You can also see this on many web pages if you change the default background colour of your browser - don't even think of using black.
This extends beyond appearance. Try to use a GTK app in Windows and see how different everything behaves as well. They somehow managed to make the global Alt+Numpad shortcut not work. Or KDE in Xubuntu, where a single click selects items from a file selector where all other programs require a double click. (I actually prefer the double click, as I like to click in the list and navigate with the arrows, or see thumbnails, etc.)

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